John Cheever photographed in his Ossining home on February 26, 1977. His novel, "Falconer," had just been published. / Michael De Chillo/The Journal News

by Ned P. Rauch, The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News

by Ned P. Rauch, The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News

OSSINING, N.Y. â?? Mary Cheever, widow of writer John Cheever, who chronicled mid-century suburban life, died Monday. She was 95.

Her daughter, Susan Cheever, said she died at her home in Ossining, surrounded by family. In addition to Susan, Cheever is survived by two sons, Ben and Fred, and six grandchildren.

"She was a woman of tremendous and varied talents," Susan said, going on to describe her mother as a poet, historian, teacher and lover of nature.

After building a fence to keep the deer out of her garden, Cheever installed a feeder in the woods behind the house.

"She couldn't bear the idea of the deer going hungry, but she didn't want them going after her cotoneasters," Susan said.

Cheever was born in New Haven, Conn., in 1918 and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College. Her father had been the dean of the medical school at Yale.

It was in the late 1930s, while working for a literary agent in New York City, that she met her future husband. According to Susan, John Cheever walked into the office in an ill-fitting coat and made an immediate impression.

"She took one look at him and said to herself, 'There's someone who needs to be taken care of,'" Susan said.

They went to dinner. She paid. He was smitten.

In the 1950s they left New York for the suburbs and, in 1961, moved into a rambling home in Ossining.

John Cheever would write four novels and a long list of short stories, including The Swimmer, a staple of high-school English courses that was made into a film starring Burt Lancaster. He died in 1982.

Susan, who, like her brother Ben, became a writer, said while Cheever recognized her husband's brilliance, she was not in awe of it. Ben and Fred Cheever could not immediately be reached for comment.

"She was never the reverential type of wife," Susan said. "I think that was good for him."

Regarding her own writing career, Susan said her mother and father were always supportive, even if it meant summoning the courage to attend the occasional book party at Elaine's, for years the social hub of New York's literary scene.

"They were country mice," she said.

Cheever taught at Rockland Country Day School and Briarcliff College, the now-defunct women's college in Briarcliff Manor.

"She made a place for herself in the world and the people she drew around her adored her," Susan said. "It had to do with Ossining, the house, her wit. It was very easy to make her laugh. I made her laugh on Sunday."